Authors: Megan Berry
It doesn’t work. “Well, well, what have we got here?” a cruel voice says as he stops right in front of us. He has his gun in his hand, but the barrel isn’t aimed at anything in particular—he doesn’t seem very afraid of little Sunny and me. My brain screams at me to use it to our advantage.
“Please don’t hurt us,” I whimper, and it isn’t acting. I’m shaking like a leaf right now.
“It’s a little too late for that,” the guy spits angrily, stepping back a bit to give us some room. “Stand up.”
I motion for Sunny to stay behind me and climb shakily to my feet. When I’m on my feet, the guy finally spots the gun in my hand, but his reaction is totally opposite of what I expected. He actually laughs at me.
“What do you think you’re going to do with that, girl?” He taunts me, and I feel a white hot surge of anger streak through me.
“Let us go!” I demand.
The guy actually continues laughing and bends over to slap his knee. “Not on your life,” he manages to get out around his laughter.
My mind goes blank, and I squeeze the trigger.
The gun is aimed at him, though I’m not sure what exact part of him. I know I’m close enough that I can’t miss, and if I do, we will be dead. I squeeze the trigger without any thought of pity or remorse for another life. This guy wants us dead. It’s him or us.
He lets out a strangled cry, and the humor is quickly replaced with new looks of shock, pain, and anger. I see his hand raising his own gun up, and everything is like slow motion as I pull my gun up faster and fire another round right into his face. He drops like a lead balloon, and I stare down at the man I just murdered, stunned.
I hear the clatter of running footsteps and duck back down, though with the body lying out in the aisle, it won’t be hard to figure out where we’re hiding. I sit hunched on the floor, sweating bullets with crazy, hot tears running down my cheek as I resign myself to commit murder again.
“Jane?” I hear Ryan’s frantic voice call out as he enters the room, and I’m so relieved that I collapse, bawling on the floor.
“Jane?” Ryan calls again, and I hear Sunny stand up behind me and call back to him. Then I feel his strong, capable hands wrapping around me and dragging me out of my hiding spot. He holds me tightly, and I feel Sunny’s small arms wrap around us both.
“I was so scared when I heard that gun shot,” he tells me, sounding like he’s on the verge of tears himself, and it makes me bawl harder thinking about what I did and what could have happened if I hadn’t done it.
“Is it safe now?” Sunny asks the question I should have had enough sense to ask.
“It is,” Ryan tells us, squeezing us even closer to him. My ribs protest, but I don’t. I bawl for another ten minutes, and Ryan holds me the entire time, even Sunny pats me on the back.
“I’m sorry,” I say at last, pulling away from his soaked shoulder, feeling embarrassed.
“No, it’s okay,” Ryan denies.
I finally look up into his face and give him a watery smile. I’m suddenly grateful that I’m not wearing mascara right now—I would have the worst raccoon eyes! I shake my head at my deranged brain. Is this really the stuff I think of after just killing a guy? Talk about a strange coping mechanism! I let out a ragged sob at the reminder, but force myself to take a deep breath rather than giving in to it.
“Where’s Silas?” I ask suddenly, looking around and realizing that he didn’t come in with Ryan and hasn’t shown up since.
Ryan hesitates and my heart sinks. “Is he dead?” I ask in a dispassionate voice, even though my emotions are starting to well up again.
Ryan quickly shakes his head to reassure me that he’s alive. “No, sorry,” he exclaims, “He is… interrogating Danvers.” He confides in me, and I wince. I’m sure that isn’t going very well—for Danvers. “We should probably wait here,” Ryan tells me, and I nod, too tired to argue. We walk as far away from the bodies as possible and sit down to wait.
We hear footsteps, half an hour later, and we all look up, suddenly alert, guns up.
“It’s me,” we hear Silas call from the hallway before he even tries to enter the room.
He walks in, covered in blood. I jump up and run to him, looking for his wound, but he waves me off impatiently. “It’s not my blood,” he tells me, stopping me in my tracks.
“Oh.”
“Let’s get out of here,” is all Silas says next, holding up the keys to our truck, and we all nod, glad to be getting the hell out of this place.
We don’t bother taking anything other than our own stuff that they took from us. Silas hands me back my leather weapon carrier, complete with all my stuff, and I somehow find the strength to belt it around my waist. Then we’re outside in the bright sunshine, and it’s like a completely different world than the horror story back inside the church.
I’m grateful there are no zombies outside in the parking lot. I don’t think I have the strength right now to fight any off. We load up into the truck, and Silas gets the motor running before ducking back out again.
I turn in my seat and watch him pumping some gasoline from the tank in the back into a bucket. Then he disappears, sprinkling gas all over the outside of the church. I watch him light a match and the gasoline ignites with a woof, the flames licking hungrily over the pristine white wash of the exterior.
Silas looks like some kind of movie hero, outlined by the flames, and then he’s running to beat hell, back to the truck as the inferno really gets going.
We peel away at breakneck speed, and I can’t help but wonder if the flames will bring all the zombies in the area, and if they’ll be stupid enough to walk right into the fire when they get here. I hope they do.
“You shouldn’t cry for him,” Silas snaps ten minutes into my latest crying jag, and I look up and narrow my eyes at him through the tears that won’t stop falling down my cheeks.
“I’m not crying for him, you idiot. I’m crying for myself,” I say stuffily, having no other way to describe the emotions plaguing me right now.
Silas glances into the backseat at Sunny, who has curled up into Ryan’s arms and fallen asleep. “You did the right thing,” he tells me after making sure the girl is asleep.
I nod my head. “I know. It was him or us… I didn’t even think about it, I just pulled the trigger.” I take a deep breath and scrub angrily at the tears that run down my cheeks. “I just didn’t know I was the type of person who would be able to pull the trigger,” I say honestly, and Ryan reaches up and touches my shoulder from the backseat.
“That guy was bad news, they all were,” Silas says, a dark look coming over his face.
“How do you deal with killing people?” I ask him honestly, knowing he must have killed at least a couple people today, and who knows who else before I met him. Silas frowns as he thinks about the question.
“Easy,” he says softly after a minute of thinking.
I look over at him incredulously. Nothing about this experience is exactly what I would describe as “easy.”
“I only kill the people that need killing.” He replies.
I open my mouth to say something—I’m honestly not even sure what—but he cuts me off.
“It’s a completely different world now, Blondie, and believe it or not, we are actually the lucky ones.” I let out an unladylike snort, causing Silas to shoot me a sharp, disapproving look. “We got to survive when millions of others didn’t. That’s all the matters, it’s up to us, now, to figure out the rest. It’s like the cavemen when the Ice Age hit, or the meteor that destroyed the dinosaurs—adapt or lay down and die.”
I fall silent, not willing to argue with Silas’s twisted logic because it actually makes crude sense, so I close my eyes for a minute and just focus on the feel of Ryan’s hand rubbing rhythmically against my shoulder. My eyes feel gritty and sore from all the crying. Poor Sunny has been traumatized, even more than usual, and Silas is a bloody mess and smells like gasoline, which is giving me a headache…
“I want to stop for the night,” I say, glancing at the clock on the dash. “It’s nearly five anyway.”
“I think that’s the best idea you’ve had all day,” Silas allows, surprising me with his willingness to stop and set up camp for the night… but, I guess the guy is covered in another man’s blood.
We drive in silence until we come across a place. It’s a small farmyard with a fair-sized travel trailer parked in the driveway. The yard looks abandoned enough, but the first thing I do is scan for a doghouse. I have a feeling ‘no dogs’ will be a crucial part of our checklist from now on.
“This place looks alright,” Silas says as we pull in. He surprises me by pulling alongside the large, white camper, rather than the house.
“What are you doing?” I ask, not sure what his intentions are, but having an inkling, and it makes me extremely nervous.
“This trailer looks like the perfect place to spend the night,” Silas says, “We’ll have to check and make sure it’s empty, and the house, but it’s a lot smaller and will be easier to secure.”
I stare at the travel trailer with mixed feelings. It
will
be easier to check for the bogeymen, and there for sure aren’t any pet doors, but if the zombies come, we will essentially be trapped in a tin can with only one way out. My stomach ties in knots at the thought.
“You’ve had a bad day, why don’t you stay here and look after Sunny while we check things out?” Ryan suggests kindly, and for once, I don’t argue that they’re being sexist. He’s just being nice.
I nod, and the boys get out of the truck with their weapons drawn. They are in and out of the house quickly, just in time to intercept a lone zombie that comes stumbling around the corner of the house. I fumble with the door handle to warn them, but Silas has already seen it and pulls his hatchet from around his belt. He lands two solid whacks to the zombie’s rotten skull before the thing collapses into a decrepit pile at his feet.
I watch them look around the corner of the house to see if there are any more nasty surprises lurking around, but they must not see anything because I see Silas pointing towards the trailer, looking like he’s cajoling. Ryan obviously gives in because they walk over side by side. Silas gives the door an experimental tug, and it surprises us all by opening right up. They step back as they wait to see if something stumbles out to attack them, but everything is still, and after a moment they jog up the steps with their guns at the ready.
I hold my breath until I see Ryan poke his head out and motion for me to join them. I reach over, wincing when my rib sends a jolt of pain racing through my body, and I gently shake Sunny awake.
“Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” I tell her, realizing with a pang that it’s the same thing my Mom used to say to get me out of bed every morning.
Sunny is instantly alert, most likely a product of all the horrors we’ve been through lately. “Where’s Ryan?” she asks automatically, and I point out the window for her.
Her eyes follow the direction of my finger, and she visibly relaxes when she spots him. “What are we doing?” She directs her question at me, even though her eyes never leave Ryan.
“Stopping for the night,” I tell her, gingerly jumping down from the truck and opening the back door so I can give her a hand out. She takes my hand with a serious look on her face, and together we make our way to the travel trailer.
“What is this?” Sunny asks when we climb up the steps and find ourselves inside a pretty luxurious set up.
“This is how rich people go camping,” Ryan says with a laugh, and I have to smile at his joke. He’s right on the money.
“We used to live in a trailer like this, only it was bigger and not as nice,” Sunny says as she walks towards the back where there is a set of bunk beds and claims the bottom bed for herself. “Ours didn’t have wheels,” she clarifies as she sits down and pulls out one of her dolls.
I look around the camper, and it really is nice. It even has stone counter tops, a much bigger fridge than I was expecting, and a stove! “There’s even a bathroom,” Silas says with a grin as he opens up a doorway and points inside. I walk over and take a peek into the smallest bathroom I’ve ever seen in my life.
“Everything is mini,” I say as I stare at the tub that doesn’t quite look big enough for me to actually bath in comfortably. It will probably be perfect for Sunny though.
“I’m going to go take a look around for some propane bottles…we might be able to get some heat going and even have a hot shower,” Silas announces as he makes his way to the door, leaving us to stare after him open mouthed.
“Is there anything that guy doesn’t know everything about?” I ask Ryan, making him shrug as he takes a seat at an actual table with bench seats on either side—it kind of reminds me of those restaurant booths, but smaller.
Silas is only gone a couple of minutes when the door opens again, making me jump. “It’s only me,” Silas says, catching the look on my face.
“I know that,” I tell him, not liking the fact that he’s actually being nice to me—it means he pities me, and I’d rather have asshole Silas telling me to get over it than that.
Silas ignores me, and walks over to the thermostat that’s located just outside the bathroom door, and starts pressing buttons like he knows what he’s doing. A humming noise begins from somewhere deep in the bowels of the trailer, followed by a slight woofing sound as the furnace ignites and warm air begins pumping through the vents.
It doesn’t take very long for the trailer to heat up and make me uncomfortable in all my layers. I peel off my vest and sweater, right down to my thin t-shirt, marveling at how fast technology, even something like indoor heat, starts to feel weird if you go without it for long enough.
I bet if my cellphone suddenly started working again too, I would find it so strange to pick it up and be able to have that convenience again! I spent my whole life surrounded by technology, and it only took a couple of weeks on the road, amid a zombie infestation, to wipe it from my mind.
Silas seems satisfied with his work and walks over to lock the outside door before peeling off his shirt as he walks towards the bathroom. “I call first shower… because I’m the one covered in blood,” he says, and none of us argue—he’s earned first dibs on this one.
I prowl around the trailer, appreciating the plush carpeting beneath my feet in the back bedroom with the bunk beds. There is another bedroom, at the very front when you first walk in, that looks like the master. I open cupboards and find a few canned goods, a bag of marshmallows, and even some pots and pans.
“Why wouldn’t these people take the trailer with them when they left?” I ask, completely stunned that someone would ignore this gem. It’s practically a mini house. I look over at Ryan, and he looks uncomfortable.
“They didn’t exactly leave,” he tells me, fiddling around with his fingers, and my stomach does a sick flip flop.
“They were infected?” I ask, even though I honestly don’t want to know, and Ryan nods.
“Inside the house. We put them down,” he trails off, not wanting to go into the gory details.
Silas steps out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam and interrupts our disturbing conversation. “Why are you guys sitting here in the dark?” he asks, grinning when we look back at him blankly.
He wanders around, sliding the blinds down over all the windows. “The glass is tinted, and these blinds are specially made to keep the light in,” he tells us, making me wonder how he knows all this stuff.
Then he reaches up and hits one of the buttons on an overhead light, and it actually turns on.
“How did you do that?” I demand, feeling like Silas just created electricity like some sort of ancient deity.
“This trailer runs off of a twelve volt battery. It might not have enough juice to last till morning, but we can use it for now. We can even charge it off the truck, if we want,” he spouts off knowledge that blows me away.
“How do you know so much about this?” I ask. We never had any sort of recreational vehicles.
Silas shrugs. “My parents had just gotten a new travel trailer, very similar to this one, for their anniversary. We camped in it all summer.” Silas stares at the wall for a minute before looking up at me. “You gonna go hop in the shower, Blondie?” he asks, changing the subject, and I nod.
“You bet,” I tell him, picking up my backpack and dragging it into the tiny bathroom with me.
I poke around a bit to see what kind of treasure came with the rig, and I discover some fluffy towels beneath the sink, as well as a couple rolls of toilet paper, some chemicals for the trailer’s plumbing, and a bottle of Ibuprofen. I peel my clothes off and stare down at my upper body. There is a huge bruise over my rib cage that is already an angry purple with a hint of a yellow tinge around the edges.
I wince and pop a couple of the aspirin from the cabinet as I turn the water on as hot as I can stand. The tub is small and irritating, but it isn’t half bad as a shower, and having hot water makes everything else seem tolerable.
I wish I could stay in the shower all day, but I don’t want to hog all the hot water, so I cut it short, breathing in steam as I wipe the condensation from the mirror and examine myself. Even with the heat on, the air still has a bit of a chill.
I get dressed in a comfortable pair of navy sweats and a pink waffle knit, thermal top before grudgingly forcing myself to leave the comforting confines of the mini bathroom.
Silas and Ryan are deep in conversation but break apart when they see me. “What’s going on?” I ask, though I’m not sure if I could gracefully handle bad news right now—obviously Ryan is thinking the same thing.
“Nothing,” Ryan says, getting to his feet and giving me a quick squeeze as he walks by to take his own turn in the shower.
I make my way over to where Silas is still sitting on the couch and sit down beside him. “What’s going on?” I ask, knowing he will be straight with me. He looks at me like he’s gauging if I can take it or not, before nodding.
“That church,” he says, digging in his pocket and pulling out a smoke. He puts it between his lips but doesn’t actually light it, and I can’t help but think that maybe I’ve gotten through to him about smoking around Sunny. “Danvers was a nut. He thought the zombies were part of the Rapture.” Silas pulls the smoke out of his mouth and tucks it behind his ear. He seems a lot more unsettled tonight than I’ve ever seen him, and I have to wonder if killing is really that easy for him after all. “They were killing people,” he tells me, and his words make my blood run cold.
“All those vehicles in the parking lot?” I ask, and Silas nods his head.
“They were all dead. Men, women, and kids. They were dumping the bodies in one of the rooms, that’s why it smelled like that…” he trails off, and I know what he saw is haunting him pretty bad tonight.
I gently put my hand on his arm, and for once he doesn’t immediately yank it away. “There must have been a hundred bodies,” he says, and I don’t ask any more questions, letting him pick what he wants to share with me. Silas snorts with laughter, even though he and I both know there is nothing funny about what we saw at that church. “He was completely nuts,” he says again, shaking his head. “He actually thought he was doing
God’s
work. All those people came to him for comfort and he killed them all. He thought the survivors were God’s chosen, and by killing them he was separating their souls from their bodies and letting them pass through to Heaven.”